Is it possible to listen to Shostakovich as simply music any more? However desirable it may be to divorce the composer's work from its personal and political context, the BBC Philharmonic's final programme of its Great Russians series presented a pair of works as fraught with hidden meaning as any coded dispatch from the cold war.

The Suite on Verses by Michelangelo was Shostakovich's final work, and is sometimes referred to as an unofficial 16th symphony. In fact, this sombre bass recitative feels like a last will and testament in which Shostakovich shares Michelangelo's pain in devoting his labour to a thankless taskmaster.

Pope Julius II and Stalin may not have held much in common, except that you wouldn't want to work for either of them; and John Tomlinson produces a hollow, gravid tone as if bearing the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. Yet the work ends on a most unexpected note, a tinkling tune Shostakovich composed when he was nine, which is so at odds with the rest of the cycle it is hard to be sure if it's a late reprieve from worldly cynicism or an uncharacteristic lapse into bathos.

The Tenth Symphony was composed shortly after Stalin's death, and opinions differ as to whether the terrifying, totalitarian onslaught of the second movement was intended as a portrait of the dictator. Less open to question is the unrequited love letter of the third movement, which was proved in 1994 to entwine musical ciphers of the composer's name with his student Elmira Nazirova. It's an instance in which too much knowledge can diminish the impact of the piece, yet to his great credit Vassily Sinaisky sounds as if he is conducting music rather than ciphers.